The Philosopher-Lobbyist

Mordecai Lee

Description

John Dewey (1859–1952) was a preeminent American philosopher who is remembered today as the founder of what is called child-centered or progressive education. In The Philosopher-Lobbyist, Mordecai Lee tells the largely forgotten story of Dewey's effort to influence public opinion and promote democratic citizenship. Based on Dewey's 1927 book The Public and Its Problems, the People's Lobby was a trailblazing nonprofit agency, an early forerunner of the now common public interest lobbying group. It used multiple forms of mass communication, grassroots organizing, and lobbying to counteract the many special interest groups and lobbies that seemed to be dominating policymaking in Congress and in the White House. During the 1930s, Dewey and the People's Lobby criticized the New Deal as too conservative and championed a social democratic alternative, including a more progressive tax system, government ownership of natural monopolies, and state operation of the railroad system. While its impact on historical developments was small, the story of the People's Lobby is an important reminder of a historical road not traveled and a policy agenda that was not adopted, but could have been.
Preface and Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction

Part I. Inventing the People’s Lobby

1. John Dewey and Benjamin Marsh before the People’s Lobby

2. Constructing the People’s Lobby, 1928–1931

Part II. Dewey as President of the People’s Lobby

3. Policy Advocacy during the Coolidge and Hoover Presidencies, 1928-1932

4. Lobby Operations and Conservative Attacks, 1928–1932

5. Policy Advocacy during FDR’s First Term: Criticizing the First New Deal as Too Conservative, 1933–1934

6. Policy Advocacy during FDR’s First Term: Criticizing the Second New Deal as Too Conservative, 1935–1936

7. Lobby Operations and Conservative Attacks during FDR’s First Term, 1933–1936

Part III. Dewey as Honorary President of the People’s Lobby and After

8. Policy Advocacy during FDR’s Second Term, 1937–1940

9. Lobby Operations and Conservative Attacks during FDR’s Second Term, 1937-1940

10. Policy Advocacy and Lobby Operations after Dewey: World War II and Postwar America, 1941–1950

11. Denouement and After

Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• États-Unis
• History of the Americas
• 20th century
• Pragmatism
• United States of America
• USA

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 08 janvier 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438455303
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Philosopher-Lobbyist
The Philosopher-Lobbyist
John Dewey and the People’s Lobby, 1928–1940
Mordecai Lee
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Eileen Nizer
Marketing, Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lee, Mordecai, 1948–
The Philosopher-Lobbyist : John Dewey and the People’s Lobby, 1928–1940.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5529-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5530-3 (ebook)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of my dad, Jack H. Lee, born Jacob Levy (1915–2007), who had the patience to wait; and to Bill Houghton, who knows why .
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
P ART I I NVENTING THE P EOPLE ’ S L OBBY
1. John Dewey and Benjamin Marsh before the People’s Lobby
2. Constructing the People’s Lobby, 1928–1931
P ART II D EWEY AS P RESIDENT OF THE P EOPLE ’ S L OBBY
3. Policy Advocacy during the Coolidge and Hoover Presidencies, 1928–1932
4. Lobby Operations and Conservative Attacks, 1928–1932
5. Policy Advocacy during FDR’s First Term: Criticizing the First New Deal as Too Conservative, 1933–1934
6. Policy Advocacy during FDR’s First Term: Criticizing the Second New Deal as Too Conservative, 1935–1936
7. Lobby Operations and Conservative Attacks during FDR’s First Term, 1933–1936
P ART III D EWEY AS H ONORARY P RESIDENT OF THE P EOPLE ’ S L OBBY AND A FTER
8. Policy Advocacy during FDR’s Second Term, 1937–1940
9. Lobby Operations and Conservative Attacks during FDR’s Second Term, 1937–1940
10. Policy Advocacy and Lobby Operations after Dewey: World War II and Postwar America, 1941–1950
11. Denouement and After
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface and Acknowledgments
Part of the fun of researching history is the occasional “huh?” or “huh!” moment when the story you’re pursuing takes you to places you didn’t expect to go or didn’t even know about. That was the genesis of this inquiry. I was researching the emergence of government PR during the twentieth century and especially its development during FDR’s presidency. I became especially interested in his National Emergency Council and its later incarnation as the Office of Government Reports as part of the New Deal (Lee 2005). A few years later, I pursued another strand and wrote about the Division of Information in the Office for Emergency Management during World War II (Lee 2012).
In both books, I quoted from Bruce Catton’s 1948 memoir of his service as a federal public relations officer before and during World War II. He called it The War Lords of Washington . It was a politically liberal retelling of the controversial arms production mobilization before and during the war. (In the 1950s and 1960s, Catton became a best-selling and award-winning author of popular histories of the Civil War.) Inevitably, I got curious about the reviews Catton’s book received when it was published. Partly by luck, I stumbled across a favorable review in a publication called The People’s Lobby Bulletin , which was published by something called The People’s Lobby, Inc. 1 Never having heard of that periodical or organization, I idly wondered what it was. It was an intriguing name, hard to forget. I eventually wrote a short piece on Catton’s book (Lee 2009). Now, years after that accidental discovery of the People’s Lobby, this book answers my curiosity about it.
It took me several years before I could take a deeper look into the People’s Lobby. By then, America was in the depths of the Great Recession. Democrat Barack Obama had been elected to his first term as president in the context of voters’ apparent repudiation of the policies of his Republican predecessor or, at least, of the Republican party’s ideology of tax cuts, spending cuts, and deregulation. Obama’s first term was dedicated to repairing the economy, in part through stimulus spending, which increased the deficit. Things got better very slowly. In the meantime, the president was attacked vociferously from the right, which said he was too liberal, too much of a big spender, and didn’t care about the impact of his policies on the national debt. To top it off, he had persuaded Congress to enact a major new policy: health care reform. Republicans depicted it as a government takeover of health care and a major threat to personal liberty. Yet, at the same time, Obama was also being attacked from the left for not being liberal enough , for his stimulus being too small to kick-start the economy, for his deficit-cutting policies as undermining economic recovery, and for a version of health care reform that was too timid because it was not a government takeover.
Over my morning coffee, I would be reading news coverage of the Great Recession and the criticisms of the president. Then I would head to work and read about the Great Depression and the criticisms of that president. The more I learned about the People’s Lobby (which was founded in in 1928, before the 1929 stock market crash), the more I saw rough parallels in American history. First came the prosperity of the 1920s and 2000s, then the Great Depression and the Great Recession, with their political debates over FDR’s and Obama’s Democratic policy prescriptions. Finally, FDR and Obama were both reelected to a second term after fierce ideological arguments and partisan claims that in their first terms they had not done enough to reverse the economic crash to justify a second term.
I gradually became intrigued by the policy agenda of the Lobby and the statements of its president, professor John Dewey, who criticized FDR and the New Deal for not being leftish enough. This was new to me, especially coming from such a major and respected American figure as Dewey. These rough historical similarities drew me in. What was it that FDR had rejected as too liberal? What were the policy alternatives to the New Deal from the non-Communist left? I was seeing the now-familiar movie of American history through new lenses. As often happens with repeated viewings of the same film, looking at the same piece of art, or rereading the same book, new and interesting details jump out that one missed earlier. I was hooked.
When I started graduate school in public administration at Syracuse University in 1970, one of the professors kept talking about how, once we graduated, he wanted us to view public service. We should be “philosopher kings,” he said. I had no idea what he was talking about, and it went right over my head. Years later (I’m embarrassed to say how many), I finally figured out he was using Plato’s phrase, of the ideal for leaders of Plato’s Utopian republic. “Aha,” I thought, “now I understand.” The professor felt that our values as public servants were at least as important as—perhaps more important than—our technical skills in management and leadership.
Everything came full circle when I stumbled on Dewey’s People’s Lobby. It initially seemed like an odd combination: a philosopher wanting to lobby government on the granular problems of public policy. Not only was Dewey a philosopher interested in improving the quality of life, but he also wrote a book about what a democratic society should look like. Then, impressively, he took tangible steps to help move his utopia toward reality. The People’s Lobby was Dewey’s effort to implement his philosophical values. So if Plato’s ideal was the philosopher king, then Dewey was something of a variation on that: he was a philosopher-lobbyist.
I was fortunate to benefit from the libraries of the University of Wisconsin. My home campus had an excellent Inter-Library Loan Department, whose indefatigable staff was able to obtain (by hook or by crook, it seemed) just about every item I asked for. Second, I benefited from a cooperative relationship among all the libraries of the university’s twenty-five other campuses. Using an online form, I was able to request any volume owned by any of them. Presto, via a regular van shuttle service, a day or two later the item was delivered to my library. Third, during this period I was appointed as a libraries research fellow by the Madison campus. That permitted me to access all online databases and journals in Madison’s collection. As would be expected, the larger flagship campus (my alma mater, class of 1970) had a more extensive online collection than my home library. Not only was such access enormously helpful and convenient, but it also sharply reduced the carbon emissions I otherwise would have caused by dozens of 150-mile round trips between Milwaukee and Madison to use those databases in person. Go Badgers. The downtown central branch of the Milwaukee Public Library also had an excellent collection from that era.
In addition to the archival sources cited in the text and identified in the Bibliography, I was greatly helped by the advice and guidance of information professionals and archivists at the Center for Dewey Studies of Southern Illinois University (Carbondale), Martin Dies Papers at the Sam Houston Regional Library (Liberty, Texas), Minnesota Historical Society, New-York Historical Society, the Peace Collection at Swarthmore College (Pennsylvania), Special Collections at the University of Virginia (Charlottesville), Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan), Washington Star morgue in the